Is Now a Sensible Time for Massive Defense Cuts?

A revolution is spreading across the Middle East and North Africa so fast that it is up-ending the standard assumptions of western policy makers.

Little more than a month ago what is happening today in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia would have seemed unthinkable. These developments were not predicted, and it is difficult to work out where they will lead.

Will the uprisings by peaceful protesters result in the establishment of democratic and benign governments across the region? One hopes so. But will it instead be a lot more complicated than that? Might new military regimes appear in several of the countries concerned? If they do, will their intentions towards their neighbors—including Israel—be entirely peaceful? If there is prolonged uncertainty and turbulence, will it have a sustained impact on the supply and price of oil? And on the trade between west and east that flows through Suez and the region?

Anyone who tells you they know the answers to those questions is just guessing. The answers depend on events that are fast-moving and on factors that are hard to read.

In such circumstances, one wonders about the wisdom of Britain’s sweeping defense cuts. For example, this is an interesting time in world affairs to be without any aircraft carriers. The government has already scrapped the harriers and pensioned off the Ark Royal.

If the argument is, perfectly correctly, that Britain needs in the future a compact but highly mobile and flexible force, then mobile air power must surely be a part of it. That means carriers. But, as of a few months ago, the U.K. has no such capacity. Planners, strategists, Defence Secretary Liam Fox and the Prime Minister all said they could foresee no situation that would require them until around 2020. With the Middle East in turmoil you can only hope they are right.

Before placard-wielding protests are mounted in the comments thread, I am not suggesting British military intervention. Merely that in a time of great uncertainty, in an unstable part of the world in which there is a nuclear power and others who want the bomb, history suggests it is sensible to retain options and the ability to project power as part of an international force if it ever came to it. It is a question of practicalities. Who knows which interests will be threatened and what kind of tensions will result?

Perhaps the, “nothing to do with us, put our fingers in our ears, wish them well, stay out of it,” approach advocated eloquently by Matthew Parris will suffice in the unpredictable years ahead. But perhaps it won’t. A foreign policy consensus—in this case that a bankrupt Britain has over-reached itself and should scale back its ambitions—can quickly turn out to be out-of-date. But, if in the interim, the machinery of power projection and influence has been dismantled and the armed forces have been weakened to the extent they have been, then Britain could have a problem when international events take an unpleasant turn.

Incidentally, John Rentoul is bound to rule the enquiry in the headline above out-of-order for inclusion in his excellent Questions to Which the Answer is No (QTWAIN). The answer is so obvious. Is this a sensible time for massive defense cuts? Nope.